The great African moon rose into the heavens and shone her yellow light upon this group of men. Overhead all was peace; on earth there was no peace. And yet it was one of Heaven’s laws that Victor Durnovo had broken.
Guy Oscard went patiently through to the end of it. He found out all that there was to find; and he found out something which surprised him. No one seemed to be horror-struck. The free men stood stolidly looking on, as did the slaves. And this was Africa—the heart of Africa, where, as Victor Durnovo said, no one knows what is going on. Oscard knew that he could apply no law to Victor Durnovo except the great law of humanity. There was nothing to be done, for one individual may not execute the laws of humanity. All were assembled before him—the whole of the great Simiacine Expedition except the leader, whose influence lay over one and all only second to his presence.
“I leave this place at sunrise tomorrow,” said Guy Oscard to them all. “I never want to see it again. I will not touch one penny of the money that has been made. I speak for Mr. Meredith and myself—”
“Likewise me—damn it!” put in Joseph.
“I speak as Mr. Meredith himself would have spoken. There is the Simiacine—you can have it. I won’t touch it. And now who is going with me—who leaves with me tomorrow morning?”
He moved away from Durnovo.
“And who stays with me?” cried the half-breed, “to share and share alike in the Simiacine?”
Joseph followed Oscard, and with him a certain number of the blacks, but some stayed. Some went over to Durnovo and stood beside him. The slaves spoke among themselves, and then they all went over to Durnovo.
So that which the placid moon shone down upon was the breakup of the great Simiacine scheme. Victor Durnovo had not come off so badly. He had the larger half of the men by his side. He had all the finest crop the trees had yielded—but he had yet to reckon with high Heaven.
XXXIV
Among Thorns
We shut our hearts up nowadays,
Like some old music-box that plays
Unfashionable airs.
Sir John Meredith was sitting stiffly in a straight-backed chair by his library fire. In his young days men did not loll in deep chairs, with their knees higher than their heads. There were no such chairs in this library, just as there was no afternoon tea except for ladies. Sir John Meredith was distressed to observe a great many signs of the degeneration of manhood, which he attributed to the indulgence in afternoon tea. Sir John had lately noticed another degeneration, namely, in the quality of the London gas. So serious was this falling off that he had taken to a lamp in the evening, which lamp stood on the table at his elbow.
Some months earlier—that is to say, about six months after Jack’s departure—Sir John had called casually upon an optician. He stood upright by the counter, and frowned down on a mild-looking man who wore the strongest spectacles made, as if in advertisement of his own wares.
“They tell me,” he said, “that you opticians make glasses now which are calculated to save the sight in old age.”
“Yes, sir,” replied the optician, with wriggling white fingers. “We make a special study of that. We endeavour to save the sight—to store it up, as it were, in—a middle life, for use in old age. You see, sir, the pupil of the eye—”
Sir John held up a warning hand.
“The pupil of the eye is your business, as I understand from the sign above your shop—at all events, it is not mine,” he said. “Just give me some glasses to suit my sight, and don’t worry me with the pupil of the eye.”
He turned towards the door, threw back his shoulders, and waited.
“Spectacles, sir?” inquired the man meekly.
“Spectacles, sir!” cried Sir John. “No, sir. Spectacles be damned! I want a pair of eyeglasses.”
And these eyeglasses were affixed to the bridge of Sir John Meredith’s nose, as he sat stiffly in the straight-backed chair.
He was reading a scientific book which society had been pleased to read, mark, and learn, without inwardly digesting, as is the way of society with books. Sir John read a good deal—he had read more lately, perhaps, since entertainments and evening parties had fallen off so lamentably—and he made a point of keeping up with the mental progress of the age.
His eyebrows were drawn down, as if the process of storing up eyesight for his old age was somewhat laborious. At times he turned and glanced over his shoulder impatiently at the lamp.
The room was very still in its solid old-fashioned luxury. Although it was June a small wood fire burned in the grate, and the hiss of a piece of damp bark was the only sound within the four walls. From without, through the thick curtains, came at intervals the rumble of distant wheels. But it was just between times, and the fashionable world was at its dinner. Sir John had finished his, not because he dined earlier than the rest of the world—he could not have done that—but because a man dining by himself, with a butler and a footman to wait upon him, does not take very long over his meals.
He was in full evening dress, of course, built up by his tailor, bewigged, perfumed, and cunningly aided by toilet-table deceptions.
At times his weary old eyes wandered from the printed page to the smouldering fire, where a whole volume seemed to be written—it took so long to read. Then he would pull himself together, glance at the lamp, readjust the eyeglasses, and plunge resolutely into
